Gwyn Cadell Val
|text1=Middle Age (Present) |item2= |text2=Young Adulthood (Past)}} Gwyn Cadell Val is SsVivid's human female character, currently an archer and hunter in Rellekka at age 39. She has practiced several religions over the course of her life, including Zamorakianism, Zarosianism, and Karamjan Spiritualism, though recent live events have inadvertently caused her to lose most of her religion. She has lived in many places, having called Varrock, Hemenster, Ardougne, and Shilo Village all home at some point. She is the spouse of the Mahjarrat Vixxox and most closely aligns as a neutral good character. Gwyn is most famously known for the time she spent as Queen Regent of Ardougne, ruling the kingdom in the absence of King Greyson I. However, she may also be recognizable for her brief stint as an archery instructor with the Academy of Heroes, known among traders and smiths for the mysterious access she had to a supply of runite ore for the better part of a decade, known among rangers for her Ranged-Guild-sanctioned identification as an archery master, or recognizable for the time she spent as a drill instructor and senator in Varrock. Life History Childhood: Growing Up Gwyn was born in Varrock. For the youngest part of her life, she lived in the southern half of the city with her father and his dirty dealings laundering crossbows for the Phoenix Gang. It wasn't the healthiest lifestyle, but it kept her alive and she learned where to put her fist in a mugger if she had to, so nobody ever really complained. It wasn't until an adolescent Gwyn was caught wearing makeshift chaos druid robes and vandalizing the Saradomnist church that her father sent her off. She spent the next eight years in Hemenster as an apprentice to the Ranged masters, learning about all manner of distance weapon and the deadliest ways to make and use them. As a result, her fighting style relies heavily on precision attacks. Adolescence: Learning More than Archery Though she remained obstinately rebellious and fiesty through her entire time living with the rangers, the experience did eventually prove to have a positive influence on her life and personality. Over the years, she slowly came to respect Felwen Croft, the man who was her primary Master, and to understand that he was the first adult to ever genuinely care what happened to her. By the time she was around 17, she may have still loved playing pranks and getting shit-faced drunk to hook up with strangers in the Seers' Village bar, she may even still have made a sport out of picking pockets every now and then, but she had learned basic discipline, understood the value of hard work, and (most importantly) had finally developed the ability to trust other people. Though the ranged masters were sure to introduce Gwyn to a wide variety of ranged weapons over the years, and she was made to become at least competent with most of them, the tool she fell in love with was the longbow. Rather than wanting to shoot the fastest or to conquer every style or to master sneaky concealable weapons like throwing knives, Gwyn felt the most reward and exhilaration when she crept silently through the woods and, taking her time and care, struck a point flawlessly from an eagle-eyed distance. Eventually, most of her efforts were concentrated on honing her precision and her ability to handle a longbow. It was a skill and a passion that would carry her for the rest of her life. On Gwyn's 19th birthday, Master Felwen presented her with two gifts. The first was a vest: it wasn't large or thick, but it was crafted from the hide of a red dragon and would be enough to at least protect her heart. The second, though, was priceless: a longbow. This bow was exquisite, but that isn't to say that it was beautiful or ornate. Rather, the craftsmanship was divine. It was compact and fairly lightweight; it was durable; it was made to stand the test of time, the abuse of many years; it was crafted specifically for her, for her size and reach and proportions. Most incredible to Gwyn at the time, though, was that it had a devastating 70-pound draw weight. This was the kind of bow that could shoot a grizzly bear and kill it from 200 paces, the kind of bow that, with the right arrow, could punch through plate armor. This was the kind of bow that meant she was probably going to need to start working out more if she was going to be worthy of using it. Adolescence: Beginning Life in Ardougne After completing her long and thorough apprenticeship, Gwyn finally returned to Varrock to find her father jailed for his crimes and nothing really left for her. Rather than sit around and do nothing - or the more appealing option, fire an arrow into her own skull - she took off again. Once she made her way clear to the other side of the civilised map, she found Ardougne. She had only ever been to this city a few times in her life, trading goods for Hemenster, but that wasn't about to change anything. At first, she held two jobs - a ranger and a barmaid for Marion, an old friend from the ranged guild, in the Poison Arrow - but on her twentieth birthday she applied for a promotion. Having shown loyalty to the kingdom and prowess at her fighting style, she recieved the promotion... and perhaps a little more responsibility than she had bargained for. Gwyn was promoted by Queen Saewyn into the position of Ranged Commander for the military, a level above what the young woman was expecting, but she soon settled nicely into the position. She eventually started to considered herself to be a valuable and influential citizen of Ardougne and continued to developed a sense of protection for it and its people ever since seeing the King Silva fall. It left an impact on her, being that she was a part of the battle that led to that death. Despite the failure, though, she gripped her jaw and stayed with the force. As commander, she prospered and built up a sense of national pride over three entire monarchies in the kingdom. That might have something to do with why she accepted King Greyson's proposal. Early Young Adulthood: Ruling Gwyn took an authoritative position of rulership as Greyson's partner when he wasn't able to serve, including through Greyson's many absences. Over time, she established many things for the city, including a number of public facilities, services, and kingdom policies. She based a community center in Western Ardougne and free public housing for lawful citizens and visitors. Gwyn put all city healthcare providers on government salary, providing free healthcare to all non-hostile wounded within the kingdom limits. Under Gwyn's oversight, there was vast improvement in the health conditions of Western Ardougne and most of its rampant infectious diseases were eliminated. Furthermore, Gwyn held a firm non-aggression stance in foreign policy and believed heavily in the sanctity of the homeland, even for her enemies. As a politician, Queen Gwyn hailed herself as an ally of citizens and men, not of governments. In fact, it's because of this position that Gwyn so graciously stepped down from her throne when the citizens of her own kingdom revolted, unsatisfied with their absentee king and their queen who was more involved in foreign affairs than domestic. In the aftermath of her reign, Gwyn spent a length of time serving as a commander for the military in the position she held even through her diplomatic period. However, after struggling to grapple with both her husband's (false) death and the frustration of no longer being treated with the respect of royalty, she handed over her position of influence and took common ranks among her fellow archers. As it turned out, even that wasn't enough distance for Gwyn to find herself again, so she resigned completely and left Kandarin for the depths of the Karamja jungle. Young Adulthood: Getting Away from the Mainland At last, content with her newfound lifestyle, she found a real adoration for the sport of big-game hunting and also a certain fondness for the simpler, more isolated tribal cultures of Shilo Village and Tai Bwo Wannai. Always having a fondness for practicing her archery on giants, she found great satisfaction with felling Jogres and has spent endless days challenging herself to become more efficient with her precise, deadly kills. Her thrill and pleasure was potent in this case that she even continued hunting once she realized, at age 22, a pregnancy was already a few months along. Maybe it's time I returned to Hemenster and became a master myself? Settle into a slower-paced lifestyle? she asked herself, thinking momentarily of the child. But Gwyn, settled? Not likely. A year passed since Gwyn first arrived in the depths of the Karamja jungle and she was still a frequent in the area. Many residents recognized her at this point and valued her for the game she brought in to trade. Most had become used to seeing her toting around an infantile girl with curious purple-grey skin and what appeared to be tribal markings on her face. The girl was especially popular among natives, a local fascination. Young Adulthood: Back Into The World Gwyn returned to Ardougne on a trade visit only to discover the truth of her not-so-late husband's false death. Not only was he alive, but he had married a new woman and was about to newly ascend the throne aside Regent and soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth. Together, they were expecting. Gwyn did not take this revelation well. She recovered from the shock of her husband's betrayal, but still took months before she began to feel confident about her stance on his polygamism. Given the circumstances, she elected for the time to keep their daughter a secret from all except the close friend she found in Ivan Aleksey. She began to split her time widely over the western map, between interests in Ardougne, the ranger guild in Hemenster, returning to Karamja to mother her child (who was cared for the rest of the time by a native islander Gwyn paid to be her nursemaid), and several tasks and paid missions she accepted from the Ardougnan government. Young Adulthood: Finding a New Home However, it soon became clear that, with the continuing change of government in Ardougne - a city whose prosperity she couldn't help but feel she had a stake in - she couldn't be happy while being so helpless and lacking in control. Such it was that she slowly began to let go of most of her ties to the city. And with the death of Ivan, who had been her child's godfather, she slowly accepted a need to relax her lifestyle and practice fewer risks in her everyday activities. Driven by this motivation, Gwyn took to Misthalin. She found a job as an instructor in bowcraft at an academy on the edge of the desert, where for a time she settled into a steady routine of work and travel. Inevitably, though, it didn't last. Only a few months had passed before Asurja, her daughter, came down with a worrysome illness, and she took her leave from the institution to go care for the child as intently as was in her power. Fortunately, the toddler recovered within a few weeks with no observable drawbacks and was able to return to normal growth. Gwyn, however, did not take her place back at the academy when she became able. She felt, given the recent events, that she couldn't afford to spend so much time away from her daughter as she had been taking in the past. If the price of that was living as a native in the heart of the jungle and hunting wildcats and graakh for their meat and hides, she considered it well worth it. Young Adulthood: More Time In The Jungle For a brief time, Gwyn even found this undertaking to be prosperous. She began to build a reputation for herself among the natives, trading valuable hunted goods to many of the tribal settlements. Her reliable and valuable trading patterns gained her a free pass into even some of the more hostile tribes in the deeper regions. This became especially true after mainland forces representing northern Asgarnia plunged their hands into the jungle and started sucking out resources for their own gain that were keeping natives alive. She did her best to keep her situation steady, venturing more often into the depths of the Kharazi for her hunting and selling other services that she could provide. In a grand stroke of luck, she negotiated a deal with the Zuberi tribe that offered her experience with guerilla-style battle commanding in exchange for exclusive control over a few key points in their trade network, plus access to the rare and valuable runite mine held within their fiercely protected borders. Gradually becoming wealthy in her own right through these methods, it would seem that Gwyn had managed to make the best of the difficult situation plaguing Karamja's tribal population, and perhaps she did. However, she had to again think of her daughter when their home settlement disbanded and the small chiefdom they had been calling home dissolved. Though her daughter was remarkably formidable in the depths of the jungle for a toddler, the thought of asking the child to live nomadically with the threats that lurked in the brush conflicted with Gwyn's better judgment. So it was that she rose up again to find a new home, and for the first time in Asurja's life, she brought the child with her. At least at this point Gwyn had come up with a fairly solid explanation for her daughter's peculiar looks. Late Young Adulthood: Origin She was nearly as reluctant to return to Varrock as she was to stay in the depths of the island. Varrock was her birthplace, her origin, and the one location that represented the dirtiest, most offensive part of her life. The last time she had seen the city aside from just passing through for travel or trade was when it was behind her, disappearing into the distance of the past, leaving her criminal father behind to rot in jail for the crimes he had neglected her to commit. And, before that, the last time she had seen it had been again behind her as just an eleven-year-old child being sent away to learn "something useful," a dirty delinquent whose father had to pay a man to take her away so that she wouldn't interfere with his own dirty business or bring any more guards to his door. But as it was, Varrock was the most sensible place for her to try to live with the little girl. Its occupation by the Worshippers of the Dragonkin had finally ended, and the city was going through a sort of renaissance, a rebuilding, and their infant military was sure to have openings in the sort of position that Gwyn was going to be looking for. In addition, so long as she managed to avoid the slums, it was a fairly pleasant location - even a low-crime destination. Uptown Varrock, as she understood, had a much lower crimerate than uptown Ardougne. One interview and a laundry list of credentials later, Gwyn was employed as the military's new drill instructor, responsible for coordinating with the three combat triangle commanders and supervising routine training sessions for the military in the main street gym. Adulthood: Rise and Fall Something Gwyn didn't count on, however, was that taking advantage of the Varrockian renaissance would backfire. She was handed her position with the military, and for a time, it was good. She would meet with General (and later, King) Aevan Aerendyl to structure the training for Varrock's militant troops. She would meet the soldiers in the evening and brutalize them with the day's fierce training regemin only to welcome them again the next morning's dawn for another dose of practice. She would spend her free time with her daughter, teaching her, playing with her, and watching her grow. With whatever was left over after their needs were cared for, she explored hobbies like fletching and bowcrafting. One day, Greyson was in the city. He had come to meet a child - Leandrea Val - who was his offspring with a lover named Darna Ardoy, with whom he had carried a brief fling. He came to visit Gwyn and Asurja. Like the many other times when husband and wife reunited, the evening was spent bonding and lovemaking. However, when Greyson soon after left, he took Asurja with him. She was still a small child, and continued to struggle with controlling the magic that constantly expelled around her. It was not a talent that Gwyn could help her daughter refine, and was becoming a danger to their safety. More than once, Asurja had set fire to straw or accidentally broken a glass into hundreds of shards, and it worried her mother. So, Asurja was sent away with her father. He promised to visit often, but like always, he never did. It was a year before Gwyn saw her daughter again, and even longer after that. Her secret child began to grow up without her. The god wars broke out, and Gwyn kept her head. Varrock had grown in her time with them; it had become the capitol of a kingdom again and spanned across all of Misthalin, with Queen Katrina I at its throne and many worthy lords across the country loyal to her. Somewhere in the time leading up to the outbreak, Gwyn had been handed a seat in the kingdom's senate - it was a council of advisors who the monarchy trusted to make smaller decisions for the country and to voice their guidance on items of great concern. She remembered being a voice of caution among the great faces of Misthalin when a strange and dangerous portal appeared in the forests behind Lumbridge, and speaking out to calm Lord Courval when he was left overwhelmed by the dangers crushing half of the southern lands he helped to rule. In the chaos, though, she lost her footing somehow. The military reshuffled a dozen times and, at some point, she wasn't sure exactly where, the forces stopped using her guidance. Between battles and missions and relief efforts, practice routines got off of schedule. Funds were focused on the efforts in the south. Bases of operation were moved around or broken or repurposed. And, at the end, when Zamorak fell and the dust of the Battle of Lumbridge settled, Gwyn no longer seemed to be a member of the Varrock military. The same happened to her role in the senate; people were lost, attention was pulled in every direction, great politicians rose to the forefront while old and loyal ones fell into the shadows, and one day Gwyn looked around herself to find that no one sought her. She hadn't even managed to keep track of what remained of her stake in the deep jungle, and her power over their trade lines had slipped from her fingers. Somehow, in all of the ordeal, Gwyn Val had been lost. Adulthood: Self-Loathing She was alone. The shadows of the world ate her up. She was thirty-three now, and she hadn't seen her daughter in two years. Asurja will be eleven soon, she thought to herself one evening. She might have gone to see the little purple mage, if only she had a clue where to look. There was no way to contact Greyson, and he was never in one place for very long. Where had everyone gone? There was a time when men fought to hear her speak, to have seconds in her presence. There was a time when she was surrounded by dozens of friends and loved ones, people she trusted and rejoiced with. Slowly, they had gone; some had betrayed her, some had perished, some simply drifted away from her with no look back. Her daughter could have died months ago, and she wouldn't even know it. But Greyson would have come to tell her that, right? ... Right? She was aimless. Time moved around her, and routine consumed her every day. She was thirty-five now. Her skin had paled from so many days spent indoors, with no one but herself. She hadn't been employed in two years - not since the salary for her place in the senate finally stopped coming. Maybe it was never even me, she wondered in the silence of her unlit home. Greyson was the reason I had a throne, it was given to me. Elizabeth's welcome was what gave me right to glory and adventure in the later days of Ardougne. I was sought at the Academy as a teacher, but never loved as a friend or admired as a master. Those who gave me respect in Kharid only loved me for my fame and my history; without it, I would have gone invisible. And here, in Varrock, where I was recognized purely for my merits... when peace was gone, they forgot me. I am unneeded and irrelevant. I was a burden on my father, and went unloved by any mother. I can't remember the last day, even, when someone looked at me and saw the impish beauty that was so clear to everyone during my days in the guild. Gwyn didn't eat much anymore. When she looked into a mirror one day, she saw in the reflection a shadow of the proud young girl she had been. Her cheeks were sunken and thin, her strength gone from her body, her hair becoming flecked with grey. Lines were starting to appear - subtle, but there without a doubt - at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth. Somehow, Gwyn no longer loved herself. She looked at a pouch on a shelf one day. She knew that pouch intimately. It strapped onto her belt and she had taken it to nearly every corner of the map - as far west as Isafdar, as far north as the shallow Wilderness, as far south as the Kharazi, as far east as the Citharede Abbey. It was full of vials, though dust had settled on it now. She pulled a handful out. The first was a bright green - a bitter fluid that had saved her a hundred times; poison antidote. The second was a rich, bronzed brown - a vile, eyebrow-shedding alcohol that could sanitize even fouled water. The third was a fierce turquoise. She had made the contents herself in the jungle. It was karambwan paste, one of the nastiest poisons she had ever heard of in her life. Gwyn put the other vials back and held the vial of paste between her fingers. She stared at it for a while. While she stared at the dangerous color within the thin glass, minutes turned into hours. It would be quiet. Painful, maybe, but quiet, and not hard to clean. A fitting end, for her to rise so high and then to come full circle: a nobody, left out with the rats in the slums. Then, for a second, she remembered who she was, and she hated herself that much more. She got up and placed the vial back into the dusty pouch. She touched the jade-edged machete leaning against her wall; she hadn't polished it in a long time. How could she let herself turn into this? How did Gwyn Cadell end up so far away from the person she had loved being? How was it possible that she was thirty-five now, and had never even really learned to love herself? Something needed to change. But, though something inside her was desperate to recognize that truth, she just didn't know what. Adulthood: Roving Gwyn left the city and travelled west. She didn't know where she was going, but somehow camping aimlessly and living like a barbarian off of the woods and the simplest hunting gave her at least a little more peace. With no destination in mind, she travelled very slowly, sometimes barely a few miles in a day. She camped and kept herself alive with firemaking and fletching and hunting and gathering and the occasional bath in a stream. She had to upkeep all of her tools and, eventually, entertained herself by putting a new chestpiece together out of bone and hide with some breast armor she had found when happening across a lady-knight's abandoned corpse in the woods. She wondered briefly who the woman was and why she had died, left alone the way she was, but Gwyn had learned a long time ago not to dwell on that sort of problem. She stayed in the woodlands in northern Asgarnia for a good while. It seemed like a good place to waver, since she could go in to Falador when she really felt like having a drink or had something for trade, and she was feeling pretty wifty about which direction to go next. Eventually, though, she started moving west again. It occurred to her that she had heard a good deal about the Fremennik peoples, but had never been so far north. That was mostly attributed, she guessed, to how little she cared for cold weather. She knew from her years in the depths of Karamja that the tribal lifestyle suited her well, but instinct told her that she didn't want to return there; it feels like the wrong thing, now, to just run back to your old hole, said her intuition. It didn't help that the jungle was where she had raised Asurja. That was guaranteed to flood her with painful memories. There was one day that signaled a turning point of sorts for Gwyn. She was resting in a tavern, having a stew dinner after a long day of trading when a stranger struck up conversation with her. This person claimed to be some kind of immortal. She didn't know how true it was; she might have laughed in his face when she was young, but now she had seen a hundred stranger things. Either way, she elected to humor him. In their conversation, it came up that he was a very self-pitying man. He lamented his condition and how it condemned him to a lifetime of stoic loneliness, how to let himself love anyone, friend or beloved, would be a tragic mistake only leading to heartache. Then she disagreed with him. She said, "If you're going to live for eternity refusing to let yourself enjoy the love of other people, you might as well slit your own throat right here." But then she stopped. The man chattered in her direction, but she barely heard him; it was striking her now that she herself wasn't living by that advice. She had been binding herself to a vow she made long ago to a man who hadn't truly been there for her in more than a decade. Even when they were truly a couple, he had barely been present. She had twisted her mind around him and rationalized the solitude she was forcing herself into because of ambiguous ideas about Greyson's grandeur. Why was she doing this to herself? She didn't know. Maybe now it was time to stop. A small weight started to lift from her shoulders, ever so faint. So it was that Gwyn found herself on the slow trek that led her up into the Fremennik lands. She spent a long time just exploring the land and getting to know the native wildlife and terrain on her own. She gradually added layers of cloth and furs to her garments as the air cooled. Soon enough, she happened across Rellekka. Adulthood: Sampling Barbarism Naturally, the citizens of Rellekka reacted to her in a nasty way at first. She looked the part, but as a stranger who spoke and behaved so differently, she was still obviously an outerlander. It took some trouble, but she managed to convince the chieftain and some of the citizens that she meant well and should be allowed to stay for a little while. The deal was that, since she would undeniably be an asset to their settlement, she was permitted a brief trial residence in the town during which she could decide if she truly wanted to become a part of the Rellekkan way of life. She was given a dagger by one of the town's more minor leaders (a symbol of his blessing for her presence) and the tolerance of the chieftain. Gwyn bonded with a farming family - a couple slightly older than her with four children of various ages who cared for chickens and goats - and took to living with them, helping on the farm, while she sampled the Fremennik lifestyle. Their names were Edda, the wife, Darvald, the husband, Lartin, the oldest son, Tontin, the second son, Rillah, the daughter, and Jartin, the youngest son. A week or two passed, and Gwyn found herself fairly content. Her pain wasn't gone, but the ways of the people here were fulfilling and, in their own way, innocent. In the mainland, men were backstabbing hounds who would poison you in your sleep, inherit your kingdom, and pretend to mourn you at your funeral. They fought for the greed for spoils they didn't need and rarely cared who they hurt while taking it. Here, though, it was much more honest. The men still had a thirst for violence and conquest, but when they fought it was for the glory of success and the satisfaction of healthy competition. The nastiest things they did to each other were strike each other down in duels and raid enemy villages when times were hard. All so much more honest. She was ready to start her trials but, naturally, things weren't that easy. Just as she resolved her desire to stay, the chieftain (who, to be honest, she didn't really care for: to her, he seemed pigheaded and brusque) was stricken down by a foreign representative he refused to compromise with. With no desire to hang around while the town went through the awkward process of reshuffling their power structure and setting everything back up, Gwyn left Rellekka and killed time by travelling south again. Her plan was to walk to Seers' Village, rest there a few days, and then walk back. Hopefully, by the time she returned, a new set of leaders would be arranged and she could start her trials right off the bat. Adulthood: Fremennik Trials Surprisingly, that plan went off without a hitch. She returned to the city, said hello to her farmer friends, and headed for the longhall. Once she was admitted inside to see Jarl Kara - it was a jarl, not a chieftain this time - her trials were approved. Though there was a bit of confusion in the beginning about exactly how she was being asked to execute those trials, everything eventually cleared up. Right off the bat, she was given two trials. The first, which she was actually instructed to complete last, was to slay a Dagganoth Sentinel. It was a gargantuan and borderline homocidal challenge, but if there was anything Gwyn still loved, it was proving that she could master any beast on the hunting field, no matter how huge or fearsome. Her second challenge, which she was told to complete first, was to enter the woods with no armor except plainclothes and no tools except a hunting knife. In that condition, she was to survive and hunt down the 700-pound grizzly that had been haunting their woods. The Bear Hunt After stopping by the farmers' home to drop off her equipment and borrow a warm, unarmored shirt, Gwyn left into the woods. On her first day, she found a tree with strong, thick branches of healthy wood, sawed some free from the tree, and tracked down a young brownbear. Sharpening one of her branches into a heavy javelin, she managed to impale the young bear through the back of the neck while it was drinking from a stream, safe in the branches of a tree. On the second day, she carved up the young bear's remains for food and bones and sinew and fur (for extra warmth in her chilly clothes). The food she needed for obvious reasons. The sinew she planned to use to make a taut bowstring and bindings, the bones she planned to use to make heavy, broad arrowheads. The longbow, of course, was the fate of one of her branches. The rest of the day was spent laboriously carving out a rough longbow. It wasn't elegant and it wasn't fit to last her a long time, but she only needed it to make one kill. By the middle of the third day, she had put together a powerful bow: still rough, but the draw weight was a devastating 65 or 70 pounds. Gwyn slathered her entire body, clothes and hair and all, with mud from the river to mask her smell, then headed out to find her real target. She found the bear at the end of the third day. She spent all of the fourth and the morning of the fifth day just following it around from a safe, secret distance, studying its habits. She figured out when it would head to the closest river to drink, then stayed there to await its return. Right around dusk, the bear arrived. From her perch in a nearby tree, Gwyn put a nasty, bone-tipped arrow right behind its foreleg. The arrow pierced its lung, and from there it was just a matter of keeping track of the beast until it died. The hulking grizzly finally gave up on the morning of the sixth day, so she spent the next dozen hours carving it up. She skinned it, cut away its tendons and put them aside (they could be useful), cut its meat into strips that she hung in high tree branches to cure, and piled its bones near a fire. Some of the remains she boiled in fresh water from the stream to clean them (and to make a nice broth to go with her dinner). On the morning of the seventh day, she filled the young bear's pelt with roughly 100 pounds of meat and hauled it back to Rellekka. Enlisting the help of a villager, a smith named Rilkir, she used a wheelbarrow and his brute, masculine strength to get the remaining 600 pounds of flesh and fur and tendons and bones all the half-mile back into town. So was her first trial complete. The Great Ice Mountain Gwyn's second trial was to scale the perilous, frozen heights of The Great Ice Mountain, get a prophecy from the oracle at its summit, receive one of the oracle's sacred trinkets, and return with that trinket. The councilman insisted that The Great Ice Mountain was different from the Ice Mountain in Asgarnia. After preparing for a trip into the bitter cold (making beer jerky, trading the massive bearskin and bones for a thick fur shirt and robe, etc.), Gwyn asked around the settlement's within the Fremennik Province where she might fight this icey mountain, but none could point her to any "Ice Mountain" said to have an oracle at its peak aside from the one in Asgarnia. Eventually, she figured the councilman might have been mis-informed about the exact location of the mountain and headed east. The task of scaling Ice Mountain really wasn't an especially eventful one. It was trying and bitter and generally a test of her endurance, but at the end of the day there really weren't many unexpected hitches. She never ran out of food, never caused an avalanche, never got trapped by a pack of hungry wolves or concussed by an aggressive ram. She spent most nights shiverring, wishing she were elsewhere, but that was the worst of it. Sooner or later, she made it to the summit and saw the oracle. Almost a month had passed before Gwyn saw the gates of Rellekka again, a reddish wooden disc with strangely arcane swirling patterns carved roughly around its face clutched in her hand. The disc was a little larger than a golf ball in circumference and was very important in that moment. It was the token she had been gifted by the oracle. Equipment She always has two pouches on her person, one with a few coins and one with a collection of tiny vials. The vials contain either karambwan poison or antidote, except for one which is full of 191 proof alcohol for disinfecting water. Typically she also carries some kind of bow and quiver and a basic, practical melee weapon like a machete or army axe. She is most talented a shooter with a longbow, and owns one that was crafted specifically for her needs. Presently, she carries around an all-purpose hunting-and-carving knife with her pouches, bow, and quiver. Appearance GwynOutfit01.jpg|Gwyn's first appearance, fresh out of her apprenticeship GwynOutfit02.jpg|Gwyn's first formal garb, needed for appearances as a commander at balls GwynOutfit03.jpg|Gwyn's original garb, dyed red after her coronation for patriotism GwynOutfit04.jpg|Gwyn's commanding uniform, taken on after stepping down GwynOutfit05.jpg|Gwyn's outfit on her first return to the mainland after assimilating with tribes GwynOutfit06.jpg|Gwyn's garb shortly after returning, feeling pressure to re-conform to mainland norms GwynOutfit07.jpg|Gwyn's attire for Varrockian masquerade balls GwynOutfit08.jpg|Gwyn returned to comfortable tribal-wear after leaving Ardougne behind GwynOutfit09.jpg|Gwyn commissioned a new formal outfit shortly after taking up the fletching profession GwynInVarrock.png|Gwyn elected to start wearing pants again when she settled in Varrock, though she kept the tribal upperwear because it was cool during athletic instruction. GwynInRellekka.png|After leaving Varrock to wander, Gwyn ended up gradually scrapping together warmer clothes from furs, spare cloth, and things she found along the way. She also let her hair grow out wilder. GwynIceMountain.png|When trials sent her up into icy mountain peaks, Gwyn traded a huge bearskin for a very thick, warm outfit in Rellekka. Gwyn is a youthful lady with pale hair that she keeps chopped short. Her face is softly rounded except for a pointed nose and chin, and her cheeks are lightly freckled. Most of her features have no strange surprises to them - no monobrows, no eyes-the-side-of-a-meteor. When gripped with compassion, she often appears to have very strong pride and confidence written on her face, and was surprisingly very much the vision of a powerful queen when the time came. Her eyes are grayish green. As she has started to age, she developed faint wrinkles around her eyes, mouth, and forehead from years of use and her angelically flaxen hair started peppering with streaks of white. Under the weight of the years, she still stood firm, but her eyes grew tellingly sad. She has a toned build, but only faintly (archery is not exactly a contact sport), and she stands at about average human height at 5'6". She has participated in many battles since she came to Ardougne, and has scars to prove it, including one on her left shoulder from a sword and a few pale speckles on her right thigh from shrapnel. She also has a startling scar wrapping around her left hip from the claws of a kyatt. Often she holds herself lackadaisically and does not obsess over her posture. More often than not, her reign was populated with visions of her reclining casually in her throne with one leg thrown over the arm of the seat, very comfortable in her place. Personality As a young girl, Gwyn was a saucy lady with an opinion whether she knows much about anything or not. She had a way of talking like she's got a clue, and she's wasn't a bad liar, either. She was willing enough to throw around fierce words. Being from the wrong side of the tracks, sometimes the wrong choice of words would easily put her in a mood - and in her earliest days, a fight, though she cooled off a little once she tasted responsibility. When handed that responsibility from the military and beyond, she started learning how to reel herself in and negotiate. Gwyn, taught to survive, not to honor, is definitely not too proud to shoot someone in the back from the shadows. Initially, she's not the most moral person you've ever met... still, she surprises herself and everyone else sometimes when it's revealed how well she really means. Time darkened Gwyn a bit. When she got into her thirties, she slowly had layers of loneliness and depression fall over her. She spent more time seeming apathetic or just downright nasty to strangers who didn't immediately rub her the right way. She felt a lot of emotional pain with which, growing up, she never learned real ways to cope. She grew out of her young and spritely personality to a point. Though Gwyn still has an impish sense of humor, a wild fierceness, and a truly genuine moral compass when it comes to the important things, she's now better described as the sort of woman with a tough outer shell grown to protect a much more gentle, fragile inside. Gwyn's Daughter Gwyn's daughter, who for the first year of her life was kept secret, is named Asurja. For two and a half years, Gwyn lived with her in tribal settlements around Shilo Village and kept her mainly under the care of a nursemaid named Sanyu on occasions when Gwyn had to be away from the settlement. The child inherited her mother's flaxen hair color, pointed chin, and up-turned nose, while she inherited her father's strange blue-grey eyes, inhuman complexion, magical capacity, and strong, defined jaw. Asurja's father is Gwyn's husband, Greyson, and as a result the child is a half-mahjarrat. This shows itself clearly through her grey-purple skin, the tribal markings on her face, and the black jewels on her forehead. When it came to raising the girl, her father was tasked mainly with providing the one thing Gwyn couldn't teach her: to control her capacity for magic. Her magical potential exhibited itself often even when she was infantile; little pebbles would fly randomly through space, and the air would warm around her on chilly nights. Most strikingly, she started to develop a recognizable personality - as a toddler, she was curious and typically didn't take interest in caution; her attitude had an impish, rebellious element to it that reveals her relation and exposure to her mother Gwyn, who often also exhibits this attitude. However, she was still very impressionable when she was first sent to live and learn from her father. She came to understand that working hard takes effort - she was exposed to routine skill practice by her father and his instruction with magic in a way that is likely to stick with her for a lifetime. Gwyn has not seen Asurja since she was around the age of 5. It's been at least 9 or 10 years since then. Quotes Gallery Gwyn01.png|Gwyn and Logan Courval assist King Aevan in breaking the wolf curse on Idonea. GwynExploresCatacombs.png|Gwyn and a scouting party exploring the Lumbridge Catacombs come across a hive of aggressive skeletons. Gwyn_HeroMachine.png|Two versions of Gwyn made with hero design games. GwynSeesTheOracle.png|Gwyn finally finds the Oracle atop Ice Mountain. She is told a prophecy. GwynAion002.jpg|A rendering of Gwyn in her mid-thirties using character construction software Trivia *Except in the rare case where the act does not disturb someone's remains, Gwyn considers necromancy to be on par with murder. This is mainly because a spirit is cursed to wander as a ghost if its remains are subjected to this magic, which is a cruel and immoral fate. Even when the victim is willing, she believes that no person who is comfortable inflicting that onto another's soul deserves to be making such heavy decisions. *Though her marriage was initially for political convenience, she gradually grew attached to Greyson. *Gwyn has rationalized acceptance of her husband's polygamy in her mind around the idea that he is a demigod and that any special recognition from him is not to be taken for granted. *After spending so much time intimately in the presence of her husband, Gwyn has grown able to tentatively identify Mahjarrat. She can't blatantly sense them as other Mahjarrat can, but often describes a suspect as someone who, "has that familiar, domineering aura of power about him." Fortunately, she also knows how to be discreet about her awareness. *It's uncharacteristic for Gwyn to wear a long gown, since it limits mobility. It doesn't concern her that short skirts and pants are less proper. *Gwyn is mostly infertile and had difficulty becoming pregnant when she tried. *Her favorite colors are Rangers Aid Green and Sq'irk Red. *In her tribe in Karamja, Gwyn was often called "Vakasa" rather than her common name. *Gwyn's Fremennik name is Rindr. *She has been known in the past to cut her own hair with a machete. *Her drink of choice in a tavern is pineapple juice and Karamja rum. *As of summer 2013, Gwyn scored a 16 on the Mary Sue Test. *Gwyn was featured in one of the RS RP Interviews, as seen here. Category:Characters Category:Royalty Category:Humans Category:Rangers Category:Zarosian Category:Noble Category:Ardougne Category:Military Category:Commander Category:Bastard Category:Female Category:Neutral Category:Good Category:Married